In just a few week’s time before WDCD will turn Mexico City into a focal point of the international design scene, the final programme is as promising as can be. The speakers list continues to read acclaimed designers and highly inspiring creative minds including design critic Alice Rawsthorn, the Senegalese fashion designer Selly Raby Kane, top chefs Elena Reygadas from Mexico and Rodrigo Oliveira from Brazil, English stage designer Marcus Lyall, the former head of design of IKEA Marcus Engman from Sweden, and many more.

Connect and activate the creative community‘For WDCD Mexico City we’ve been able to compile a programme that will be among the best events we’ve organized so far. It will be What Design Can Do on steroids!,’ says WDCD’s co-founder and creative director Richard van der Laken. ‘I’m really proud of the list of speakers we will bring together from so many different countries and disciplines, which represents the core of our mission: to connect and activate the entire creative community and inspire designers to work together to make this world a better place. Mexico has a great creative community and lots of issues to tackle, two things WDCD aims to connect.’

Grand Opening night: a fountain of inspiration The three-day programme will start off with a spectacular opening night on 6 May in the Palacio de Bellas Artes: a 90-minutes introduction to what visitors will be immersed with the following two days. Expect a fountain of inspiration and a speed-update of what is boiling in the creative community around the world.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Conference: encounter, exchange and hands-on activityThe two conference days on 7 and 8 May in Frontón México are focused on encounter, exchange and hands-on activity. Here you will hear the full stories of the speakers and have the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with them. The workshop programme is meant to provoke the participation of everyone in the house, asking them to think together how creativity can help change our society for the better.

‘A unique event’‘WDCD is calling us to participate, design, innovate, to change lives. And above all, to make us realize that we can do it!,’ Mexico’s minister of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard said at the launch event of WDCD Mexico City, early in March. The former mayor of the city witnessed WDCD in Amsterdam in 2017 as a speaker and immediately had the idea that México could benefit from an event like this. ‘Being in Amsterdam I saw something that in my experience has been unique because we usually think that design is focussed on the shape and we rarely think of design in terms of concept. It is the concept of how to organize a society. And it was then that I understood why I had been invited to WDCD.’

Marcelo Ebrard

Six themesThe programme in Mexico City is grouped around six themes: The resilient city, Designing activism, New creative leadership, Creating cultural identity, Humanizing immigrants, Food will pacify us. Under all these themes the role of design and creativity as a source for societal change is discussed, and for that matter, practiced in the various breakout sessions.

Get your tickets nowIf you’re in the creative industries in México, in business or in government and determined to make a change, you should hesitate no longer and visit our ticket shop at www.whatdesigncando.com/tickets-mexico/